All the changes happening in the IT World is also causing trouble in the Channel, as anyone in the channel can attest to. CompTIA released its Third Annual State of the Channel Study: Channel Conflict and Deal Registration Trends, an online survey of 350 U.S. IT company executives conducted in February 2013.

the study found that "Eight in 10 say conflict has affected their business negatively, including 21 percent that described the impact as "major."

I just like using acronyms. A VAD is a value added distributor like Tech Data, SYNNEX, Arrow, Ingram Micro and Insight. Like Dell and Microsoft, these companies have to shift their business model to adjust for a decline in hardware and software sales. Everything is going Cloud.

An agent asked me for some advice on what Hosted PBX provider they should look at. I think it is always about local - you need local support, local numbers, and if it is OTT or single location local network.

Then she asked me what questions to ask a cloud vendor. Here are 5 and one-half.

A great read in INC magazine. What does your customer want? "The reason that they're turning to you and your firm is that they're stuck and need your help. Therefore, you must be able to bring something new to the table."

There have been some interesting articles lately. I can't get to all of them, but here are some good reads.

Death of the Telecom VAR in 2013 - How an entire sub-industry will be wiped out in the next 24 months by Jeff Hawkes. "Traditional telecom VARs or value-added reseller businesses- those that derive the majority of their revenue from the sale of on-premise PBX equipment to business customers- have ridden one of the longest product life cycle waves in recent technological history and combined with an emerging threat from hosted phone providers and a professional background that leaves most ill-prepared to run a business larger than a few employees is threatening to wipe-out or dramatically alter an entire sub-industry in the next 24 months." He writes like me.

When I heard Mark Sanborn call business a thinking man's spot, it made me smile and then think. Oddly, most of these news items have all fallen in my lap today. It made me re-think how the value added distributors (VADs), like Tech Data, were going to morph.

Tech Data is the 2nd largest VAD at $26 Billion after Ingram Micro (at $37.8 Billion in sales), but TD is located in Tampa Bay, where I reside.

Can agents even sell cloud services? Sure but as a sales engine, not an install and deployment shop. That will be the hard part: who does all the pre-sales and post-sales engineering if an agent just wants to ink contracts for you?

There is this article with four opinions about the Channel in 2013. Reading them, I am almost certain that they are not only viewing the channel from differing sides but that they are discussing different channels.

I do like the statement from Ian Moyse, "We are seeing the same swathe of change as we have seen in other industries with providers who ignored the changes in customer buying choices (take Kodak, Blockbuster Video and the big record shop chains such as Tower Records and HMV). This change will be a contributor but not the only cause to the start of a new re-shaping and re-sizing of the channel with resellers facing new competition from Telco's, Xsp's and a new breed of reseller and potentially vendors themselves."